BP’s Invisible Damage

“Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.”-Norman Cousins

Week before last, a fisherman in the Gulf of Mexico took his own life. It was the first reported suicide in this unending and unfolding BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

William Allen Kruse, 55, a charter boat captain recently hired by BP as a vessel of opportunity out of Gulf Shores, Alabama, died Wednesday morning before 7:30 a.m. of a gunshot to the head, likely self-inflicted, authorities said.

There were dozens of suicides resulting from the stress of the Exxon Valdez. The unseen depth and despair in the Gulf of Mexico is taking it’s toll.

We’ve received many requests to post the radio segment where I talked about this.

As a resident of New Orleans, I thank you greatly for addressing this. From where I am, the effects of the oil geyser are proving to be even worse in many ways than the effects of Katrina and the Federal Flood were on the Gulf coast. People’s already fragile psyches were already stretched to the limit by having to rebuild their homes and their lives over the past five years, and then this happens and we can’t do a damn thing.

How can we plug up a hole 5,000 feet down in the deep? We can’t.

How can we get past the money BP was offering from the very first to everyone to help them clean their own mess? The economy’s bad to begin with. This thing has killed the fishing down here. I don’t blame the people who signed – they wanted to do something. They wanted to get back to work, not realizing the magnitude of the tragedy in their waters.

How can we get past the cuts that keep being made to health services in Louisiana in particular? It’s eliminated the number of psychiatric beds available to those in serious need of mental health. We need those services now more than ever, and we do need to hold onto each other now more than ever, but rebuilding such already fragile spirits will be an extremely long haul.

And now here we are.

Your show ought to have been broadcast well beyond Alaska, and I’m glad that, with the help of technology, we can do something about that. I thank you again for this, and hope the message you had on this day will travel far and wide.